1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to an automatic dialing assembly that serves as an alternative for a prepaid phone card and more specifically to such an assembly that includes a personal identification number in machine readable data for reading by a point of sale terminal for activation purposes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prepaid calling cards are rapidly becoming more and more popular. In 1999, thirty-three percent of United States consumers were using prepaid phone cards. Just four years later in 2003 it is estimated that an excess of sixty percent of U.S. consumers used prepaid phone services. Prepaid phone card sales are estimated to have exceeded 4 billion dollars in 2003. Sixty-two percent of all teenagers 12 to 17 years report prepaid card usage while fifty-four percent of young adults between 18 and 34 also are active phone card users. Older users have shown the greatest growth in card usage, increasing from eleven percent in 1999 to thirty-five percent in 2001. One-third of all card users purchase a prepaid phone card at least once a month. In 2002, the average convenience store sold over $10,000 worth of prepaid phone services compared to only $3,421 in 2001.
The major reason mainstream customers use prepaid phone cards is for convenience and to save money. Two out of five prepaid customers say they purchase cards to save money on telephone calls. One out of five say they use prepaid cards because they are convenient. Avoiding long distance calls on telephone bills is also a common reason for usage.
A typical prepaid calling card includes two multi-digit numbers printed thereon corresponding to a toll free telephone number to access a central accounting system and a personal identification number (PIN) that is specific to each card. For each PIN, an account is established for a predetermined amount of long distance telephone service. Thus, simply by dialing the toll free access number for the central accounting system and then dialing the PIN, a prepaid calling card user obtains access to a long distance telephone system for the placement of calls as desired.
Prepaid calling card accounts are normally maintained by long distance telephone service providers or resellers who buy long distance telephone time in bulk and then resell such time to consumers. In view of the fact that the only information needed to access a person's account is the toll free access number and the PIN, security is often a major problem. Accordingly, different alternatives for protecting the PIN or the toll free calling card number have been utilized, for example, one or both of these numbers may be encoded in machine readable data included on the calling card.
One of the biggest problems with prepaid calling cards is the frustration and error frequency that users encounter in attempting to manually dial the 22 to 30 digits encompassing the toll free access number and the PIN. Obviously, simply the misdialing of one number of these 22 to 30 digits requires a user to repeat the dialing operation to successfully place a call.
In view of the above concerns, a variety of prior art devices have been developed to provide a means for automatically dialing at least a portion of the numbers required to be dialed for obtaining access to the central switching network. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,764,742 issued to Howard, et al. in 1998, a telephone access system is disclosed that provides a portable device having a magnetic card reader for reading optically encoded data on a prepaid calling card and a tone generator for generating one or both of a toll free telephone number and an access code to a long distance telephone service. As described in such patent, the reader is utilized for reading the optically encoded data on the calling card and is then capable of generating the toll free number and/or the access code upon actuation.
Another example of a prior art device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,637 issued to Arzoumanian Oct. 5, 1999. Such patent discloses a portable telephone dialing device that is adapted to automatically dial a preprogrammed abbreviated telephone number at one speed, waiting for a short period and then dialing a preprogrammed access number at a different speed for gaining access to a long distance telephone system.
Although the above described prior art devices have useful functions and features that eliminate to a certain extent certain of the concerns provided by standard prepaid telephone calling cards, neither of such devices is adapted to be activated through a point of sale operation and they are unnecessarily complicated in structure and operation. The present invention is designed to provide an automatic telephone dialer that allows for activation of a personal identification number account at a point of sale terminal and the automatic dialing upon actuation of a toll free access number and a PIN for gaining authorization to a central telephone system.